I Know A Farmer Named Giles.

You probably won't want to hear this, especially if body problems upset you. If they do turn back now, if you're a reasonable, open minded person who's not too precious then read on...

The Good Lord must be angry with me at present. I don't think I've done anything wrong but he's decided to bestow on me the 11th Deadly Plague-namely Piles. Now, you won't have read about piles being brutally imposed on the people of Egypt in Biblical times because when it was being typed up by those ancient religious scribes all those years ago, piles were deemed too horrifying to be included. Rats, frogs, darkness, fire, unhealable boils and death- they were all fine, but they left out the gory details about those poor Egyptians being cursed with piles because they believed that it showed all too much what an angry vicious cunt God can be when you get his back up. And who would want a God like that? Anyone who's had them will agree-they're just not very funny when you're on the receiving end. I'm not sure how I got them this time. Probably from just eating service station junk and sitting on my arse a lot. I feel truly unlucky.

Well all this got me thinking; thinking about all the times I have been blighted with piles and the various different reasons for it. Apparently, once you break the seal (literally there's a seal there-like a head gasket and once it goes you're fucked for good) you can expect to be afflicted with this terribly embarrassing afflication sporadically until the end of your days. The first time was at Benicassim 2002. It must have been a combination then of bad diet (damn you Pinguin burger!), hot sun combined with lots and lots of cheap booze and overpriced Spanish drugs because I remember waking up one morning in the half built toilet block that we had captured as our sleeping quarters, due to our tents being hotter than the sun after 8.30 in the morning, and feeling this never-felt-before stinging sensation in my nether regions. I was bemused and scared in equal measure. I try to value to my hygiene as best as possible at a festival, but all my good intentions usually get thrown casually into the breeze after day two. Despite this I wasn't going to start poking around down there with a dirty finger for any reason and besides, I had also half convinced myself (after years spent reading internet based stories of horrible insect-related holiday anecdotes) that I had been attacked by a spider or scorpion in the night and that some poor soul would have to suck the poison out. In desperation I turned to my friend;
"Paddy! Wake up!"
"Huh! What?" he said puzzledly as he half turned over, revealing a face that was covered in concrete dust having spent the whole night face down on the hard floor.
"Paddy, you're gonna have to take a look at my arse. I think I've been bitten!"
With worrying immediacy, he replied: "Go on then. take your pant down and i'll take a look."
Now thats either the mark of a true friend or of a person who's waited for years to be asked that question. I've never been sure about Paddy. Reluctantly, i tentatively pulled down my strides and bent over a good few feet away from him, holding my bum cheeks apart so he could see.
"I can't see! You'll have to come closer!" he exclaimed. It was possible, I suppose. He had just woken up after a heavy nights drinking so it wasn't outside the realms of possibility that his eyes were blurry. I shuffled closer to him.
"I still can't see!"
I shuffled ever closer.
"Look! Do you want me to have a look or not?"
I shuffled nervously closer to him still.
"Hmmm" he said "does it hurt when i do this?"
Before the final words left his mouth and i had time to move, he jabbed a small stick into my arse crack.
"Aaaaaaaahhh!!! You fucker!" I screamed and recoiled away in horror and in searing agony, "That fucking kills, you prick!"
He just laughed, dropped the stick and lay back down with his dirty stone encrusted arm covering his eyes; "It's just piles. I wouldn't worry about it."
Just piles! Just fucking piles! Worry about it?!?! I was fucking crestfallen! What had i done to deserve this? I was only 21! Piles were reserved for gay men and old people who sat out on cold benches outside Woolworths all day long. This couldn't b happening to me?
"What do you mean 'just piles'? What the fuck do i do now?" I exclaimed.
"Well you can poke them back in or get some cream or just ride it out." He said with annoying nonchalance. Let's just say that option 1 didn't go at all well. It was about as close I've come to passing out in my whole life. Riding it out wasn't going to work either because i was miserable for the rest of the day, especially so when word spread about my delicate condition amongst my friends and then on to the nice young women that we had befriended. We were sat in a bar later on when a nice young tanned girl from Bournemouth put her arm around me and jokingly consoled me with the words "Don't worry, Paul. My Dad has piles and they don't last forever!" I looked up and could see Paddy smirking at me, he had told everyone! The bastard!
"Please don't touch me!" I pleaded half jokingly, but pathetically, "I feel dirty!" and then I got up and walked over to Paddy.
"Right! I can't take this anymore. What's this cream I need to get?"
Still smirking he replied; "Alright Champ! That's the spirit! We'll beat this disease together! It's called Anusol in England, i'm sure it'll be the same over here. Lets go to the chemist and find some!"
So we made our excuses, actually, they weren't so much excuses, Paddy gleefully told the laughing table that we were going to purchase pile cream and we left.
Now my grasp of the spanish language isn't great but i'll always give it a go. I insisted amongst our 8 strong party that they must all try and order their drinks and booze in spanish and that the spanish business men and women would more than likely speak english anyway, but they'd be pleased with our efforts. So I took out my English-spanish dictionary and looked up how to say "Can I please have some pile cream for my rabid arse crack?" It wasn't in there, so I decided upon saying "L'Anusol, por fa vor?" in a pseudo-spanish accent.
I had had a few drinks but still needed to pluck up the courage to enter into what could only be a frightfully embarrassing encounter and then we walked into the chemist. We had been in there already once or twice to buy plasters, bandages and sun cream so they were familiar with us and therefore hated us already. There was a queue which we joined and Paddy stood chatting to me as I geared myself up only half listening to the gubbins that he was coming out with. I could smell the booze on his breath.
"Don't worry, it'll all be over soon." he said with a grin "Soon after you've bought the cream and then applied it with your finger 4 times a day for a week!"
"Just fuck off Pat! This is bad enough without you adding to it!"
Soon it was our turn at the counter. A queue of locals had already formed behind us so this wan't goin to be pretty.
"Hola Signorena!" I said nervously to the angry looking lady behind the counter in my best spanish accent, "L'Anusol por fa vor?"
"Que?" she replied with a puzzled look.
"L'Anusol?" I repeated.
"Que?"
"Um, l'Anusol? You know? Pile cream?" I leant in and whispered anxiously.
"Que?" she again said before calling over her co-worker, an even angrier looking gentleman.
I repeated my request to him but it again fell on deaf ears. The queue behind me seemed even larger now and i could feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment. This was just fucking marvellous! Everyone in this this town seemed to have some grasp of the english language and my token gesture to speak their lingo had served me well up until this point, but not here! I had found the oly two people in own who either couldn't or didn't want to talk English.
Paddy decided to chime in unhelpfully, "You know, L'anusol?" He pointed at my arse and said loudly- "Non funciona! Non funciona" He had read this on a out of order pool table the night before and was now pointing at my arse and declaring to the whole shop that it didn't work. The situation descended but Patrick was convinced that we were getting somewhere. The two shop keepers talked amongst themselves and came back with an array of boxed spanish medicine. Most of it looked like laxatives and none of it was pile cream.
"Come on Pat, lets just go please!" I was dying with shame at this point. "I just want to get out of here."
"No no no. You need fixing up. They've got to have it!" he replied as he lifted up and shook each box they placed on the counter. He was fucking loving this.
Then, from the middle of the queue, came an angel. An olive skinned beautiful angel. This young spanish girl sidled up to the counter. She was utterly stunning with big brown eyes and a mass of shiny black hair. She looked at me and said in a sultry Spanish accent "Ah, you have piles, no?"
I could have died right there.
"Um, I'm afraid so, yes" I admitted quietly before realising that I could no longer keep eye contact with her out of utter shame. She then turned to the people behind the counter and spoke a few words in Spanish. The male shop keeper let out an audible laugh. I'd like to think he was bound by some spanish code of pharmaceutical ethics, whereby it's an offence to laugh at any of the ailments your customer comes in with and that hopefully the laugh was more out of relief that he could now finally get shot of us, but at the time it felt like the whole shop was laughing at me. He walked to the end of his counter, reached under it and came back with a small box. It was fucking Anusol! Not the spanish equivalent with a name we couldn't pronounce, but good old fashioned Anusol. Paddy picked up the box and laughed, "Yey Anusol!" he said as he held it up next to his head and pointed out the words on the box to the shopkeeper.
"Si, Anusol!" the shopkeeper replied with a nod.
I turned and thanked the beautiful girl who had already made he way back to her position in the queue.
"Es nada" she replied with a smile which nearly killed me again.
I put some euros down on the counter, turned on my heels before the man could give me the change and got the hell out of the shop. I could hear Patrick ending the sad situation with a florish by drunkenly thanking everyone and saying goodbye.
I stood waiting for him with the box of cream in my hand when he came out the door and we walked away.
"See Champ!" he said sarcastically before giving me a slap on the arse, "I told you it wouldn't be so bad!